The Nashville Predators have acquired defenseman Korbinian Holzer from the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for defenseman Matt Irwin and a sixth round pick in 2022.
First reported by Pierre LeBrun of TSN but now official.
“We made the one small trade,” General Manager David Poile said about the activity at the Trade Deadline. “I really felt our bottom defense needed to have a little bit of a change. I think, with Holzer, it just brings a different kind of an element. He’s a bigger body player that plays pretty gritty, pretty physical and can play on our penalty killing which certainly can use some help.”
Holzer, 32, has spent his entire North American hockey career with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ducks, consistently splitting time between the AHL and NHL in both places. The 2006 fourth round pick of the Leafs should join the Predators in time for tomorrow’s game against the Ottawa Senators. Whether he plays or not is a different question.
“It’s a small deal but hopefully an important deal as we go along for the remainder of the season,” Poile said.
Many fans were starting wonder if General Manager David Poile was going to make a deal at all. The National Hockey League’s 2020 Trade Deadline occurred at 2:00pm Central Time and news of the move didn’t get reported until nearly an hour afterward.
More than the trade is the lack of trades that was noticed most by the fanbase.
“As they say in GM 101, sometimes the best trades you make are the one’s that you don’t,” Poile said. “Obviously our play this year has caused me some pause as to how we approach the deadline this year as opposed to other years.”
And for the fans who thought Poile was sitting on his hands all day…
“I think we were very active in terms of the amount of phone calls that we were making to different teams,” Poile said. “In the last week — and specifically the last two or three days — I’m pretty sure I talked to all 30 other teams at least two, sometimes five or six times.”
The Preds came into the 2019-20 campaign with legit Stanley Cup aspirations. They were just 28 months removed from going to the Stanley Cup Final, they had lost in the second round in 2018 but it was at the hands of the second-best team in the League thanks to the NHL’s playoff structure and basically the same group came back and won the Central Division last year. They added Matt Duchene to the mix and thought they were on their way. And, to their credit, October looked as if that hype was a reality. They went 8-3-1 to start the year and looked dominant doing it but, since then, they’ve been a very average 22-20-6.
“At the start of the season, I was very bold in my statements about my belief in our team,” Poile said. “It’s been a rocky road to this point but I’m totally focused on the playoffs and keeping Craig Smith and keeping [Mikael] Granlund with maybe the hope that we could continue discussions a little bit further and possibly have them sign with us during the season or in the off season.”
Nashville is 8-4-1 in their last 12 games and 11-8-1 since the coaching change from Peter Laviolette to John Hynes.
“We have to appreciate making a coaching change,” Poile said about the team’s overall record. “There’s going to be a learning curve for everybody. There have certainly been some adjustments and there are some players where the cheese has been moved a little bit. Some got a bigger slice of cheese and some got a smaller slice of cheese but, overall, I think we’re going in the right direction.”
Nashville will host Ottawa Tuesday night at 7pm Central.
